James Dean^†

He made three movies. That's it. His stage turn in The Immoralist on Broadway got Elia Kazan's attention, who cast him as the brooding Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955). The film was the only one released before the Porsche 550 Spyder ended things. He followed it with Rebel Without a Cause, the first film where he got top billing, which came out a month after he was already dead. Those two performances, plus Giant, built a myth out of raw material that barely existed on screen.

The Academy nominated him twice, posthumously, for acting Oscars, once for East of Eden and once for Giant. He remains the only actor with two posthumous nominations. He lost both times (to Ernest Borgnine in 1956, Yul Brynner in 1957), but the cultural conversation around him barely noticed. Decades later, he's still the template for what teenage rebellion is supposed to look like. His likeness gets licensed, movies keep borrowing his energy, and a crash site in rural California still draws pilgrims. Three films. Ongoing.

His mother died of uterine cancer when he was nine, and his father put him on a train back to Indiana with her casket and didn't go with him. He grew up on a Quaker farm in Fairmount, raised by his aunt and uncle. Alec Guinness warned him, the week before the crash, to get rid of the Porsche or he'd be dead within a week. Elvis Presley started pursuing acting in part to follow in his footsteps. His headstone was stolen twice.

Rebel Without a Cause premiered on October 27, 1955, less than a month after his death. Giant followed in 1956, also posthumous. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor for East of Eden at the 28th ceremony in 1956, the first posthumous acting nomination in Oscar history, then nominated him again for Giant in 1957. Both nominations lost. The intersection where he died was formally designated the James Dean Memorial Junction in 2005.